The Gas Rapes of Manitoba Colony

In 2005, the women of Manitoba Colony began to wake to blood and semen staining their sheets, extreme fatigue, pain "down below," and pounding headaches with no memory of what could have happened overnight. The men had two possible explanations: Satanic demon attacks or "wild female imaginations". One woman explained, "One time, I saw something through the window and my husband said I was having visions of hell" (VICE). The religious community had no other way of explaining how women went to sleep clothed but would wake up completely naked with fingerprints all across their bodies the next morning. They could not possibly wrap their minds around how women would wake up with rope tied around their limbs or with grass in their hair.

Sara Guenter was the first to begin speaking up. She would do everything she could to keep herself awake. Her husband would lock their front door in a colony that normally left all doors open. But the rapes continued, no matter what they tried. Originally, her family had no idea that they were not alone in the attacks but eventually, it happened so often that Sara told her sisters. Rumors that she was making it up to hide an affair spread across the colony and the family's pleas for help remained unheard.

Sara Guenter. Photo taken from VICE's documentary "The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia".

Stories that matched Sara's began to multiply. Women across the colony would wake up to the same symptoms. Some women could remember snapshots: men on top of them, no ability to yell or fight back. Others simply had blank spots in their memories instead. Mornings after the attacks all looked the same: head pain, stained sheets, and work to be done despite the fatigue and aching bodies. One anonymous man described how "They went to one woman’s house the most but there were many people who believed she was lying and that she was making things up to create chaos. But when it started happening in other homes, people started believing" (VICE).

Ages of the victims did not seem to matter to the attackers either. Helena Heibert, a Manitoban Mennonite told journalists, "One morning, my three-year-old daughter woke up with a bloody cloth in her bed. Then I asked her: ‘Why is this here? Where did it come from?’ My daughter responded that two men had been in her room" (VICE).

Helena Heibert, turned away from the camera to protect her face. Photo taken from VICE's documentary "The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia".

The headaches and fatigue were not limited to solely the women; men in the households would have the same issues with no explanation for it. While never discussed publicly, some people of the colony confided in Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, a journalist who spent lots of time in Manitoba Colony with them, that the men and boys were raped too.

In June 2009, two men were caught trying to enter another home--attempting to begin another attack. Those two named the other men involved and eventually, all nine men, ages 18 to 46 confessed to raping the families in the Colony over the past four years. After being questioned incessantly "until they could no longer lie," the men explained that they disabled the families by spraying them with an altered anesthetic, originally used for cows, made by a veterinarian from a separate Mennonite colony. According to the men, groups of three would spray the tranquilizer through screens in the bedroom windows to immobilize complete families, then crawl inside and rape the people who were unable to protect themselves. Their first victim was the mother, raping her while she slept next to her husband. Afterwards, they would rape all the daughters in the house.

Two years later, the trial began. While there were hundreds of victims, only 130 women and girls stepped forward. That means that at least one person from more than half of all the households in Manitoba Colony came forward. However, the actual number of victims could be at least 300 people. The youngest known victim was three years old at the time and the oldest was sixty-five years old. It did not matter if the women and girls were married or single, residents of the colony or visitors, or what their physical and mental conditions were. All were rendered helpless. All were attacked. All were raped.